For a Shy Man, U.S. Attorney Has Kicked Up Some Dust

The most publicized drug trial in the nation’s history had ended in a government defeat, and the new chief federal prosecutor in Los Angeles felt obliged to speak candidly.

In the aftermath of the 1984 acquittal of John Z. DeLorean on drug charges, U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner became the first government official to concede that federal prosecutors had erred.

“In the beauty of 20-20 hindsight . . . we should have insisted that DeLorean put some of his own cash into the deal or let him walk away,” said Bonner, finding fault with the FBI “sting” operation that led to DeLorean’s arrest.

That comment--which brought Bonner a reprimand from the Department of Justice--was an early controversy in the tenure of a U.S. attorney who had been portrayed by fellow prosecutors as shy and quiet on taking office eight months earlier.

Today, at the halfway point of his four-year term as head of the nation’s second largest regional force of federal prosecutors, the man who went on to personally prosecute the first FBI agent ever charged with espionage has learned to be more cautious in his public comments.

But, both by his decision to handle the spy trial of Richard W. Miller himself and his continuing outspoken views on a variety of legal issues, Bonner has emerged as one of the most controversial U.S. attorneys in recent decades.

While he has muted some of his criticisms on subjects that are sensitive to the Justice Department, Bonner is quick to call for new federal death penalty legislation, to defend the record of Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, and to proclaim his own office to be the best federal prosecutor’s office in the nation.

“The first-degree murder of the President of the United States--that ought to have a death penalty,” he said in an interview last week. “I think there ought to be a death penalty reactivated in espionage cases. Certainly we should consider reactivating the old Lindbergh law in kidnap cases.

“What Congress has never done, despite the fact that it’s been 14 years, is to re-enact death penalty statues to comply with Supreme Court procedural requirements,” he said. “Hopefully that will be rectified soon.”

In the same interview, Bonner defended Meese against charges that he has launched a “constitutional assault” on the U.S. Supreme Court by challenging some of the court’s recent rulings.

“I see Ed Meese as a really positive force as attorney general,” Bonner said. “He’s been extremely quick in understanding the issues affecting the office. You mention assaults on the Constitution. I think the attorney general has raised some valid and interesting questions.”

Minimizing the importance of high-profile cases such as those involving DeLorean and Miller as an accurate measurement of how well his office has performed, Bonner took the view that the best yardstick is the overall record of major prosecutions in complicated cases that would not even bring indictments without an aggressive approach to prosecution.

“This has always been an exceptionally good U.S. attorney’s office,” Bonner added. “In judging over the last decade or two, I’d say this is the premier office in this country. It’s not only the extraordinary variety of cases that crop up here, it’s the magnitude of them. My own sense of it is that we have more big cases here than anywhere else.”

Bonner cited the continuing public corruption investigation involving W. Patrick Moriarty, the earlier corruption case of City of Industry founder James M. Stafford, the Orange County cocaine prosecution of Alan Charles Mobley and a series of defense industry kickback cases as examples of such cases in the last two years.

“He’s surprised a lot of people, I suspect,” said one of Bonner’s admirers. “He is a little on the shy side, as people thought. But he’s proven in the last two years that he’s too strong a guy to put his own feelings aside. He’s been a good U.S. attorney because he believes in his convictions and stands up for them.”

Even before his comments on the DeLorean case in September, 1984, Bonner had surprised and angered some Justice Department officials in Washington by earlier public criticisms of government practices and policies during his first few months in office.

After his comments on DeLorean, a prosecution which had begun 18 months before Bonner took office, there was talk in Washington that the new U.S. attorney in Los Angeles was fast becoming a “loose cannon on the West Coast.”

Justice Department sources said Bonner was personally reprimanded in early September, 1984, by then-Deputy Atty. Gen. Carol Dinkins and warned not to make similar public statements in the future.

Little more than a month later, Bonner made another controversial decision--to personally head the prosecution of Richard W. Miller, the first FBI agent ever charged with espionage.

After a yearlong effort by Bonner to handle the Miller prosecution while also managing the office, a three-month trial ended in a mistrial last November when jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict.

Privately disappointed and angered by press accounts that portrayed the deadlock as a personal setback for Bonner and a “stinging defeat” for the government, Bonner immediately announced that he intended to head the prosecution team again in a retrial now scheduled to begin Feb. 13.

Risks Reputation

To some degree, Bonner, regarded by fellow attorneys as an outstanding trial lawyer, has risked his reputation on the ultimate outcome of the Miller case. Whether he should have taken the case at all remains a subject of dispute among even his closest supporters.

“I thought it was a mistake personally for him to try the case,” said John J. Quinn, a former law partner with Bonner in the firm of Kadison, Phaelzer, Woodard, Quinn & Rossi, where Bonner spent nine years as a specialist in commercial and antitrust litigation before becoming U.S. attorney.

“I don’t think it’s a function of the U.S. attorney to try cases that tie them up for long periods of time,” Quinn added. “The function of the U.S. attorney is to run that office.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Darrell W. MacIntyre countered: “It raised the spirit of the office having the boss go down and personally try a difficult case. It gave everybody a good feeling.” MacIntyre, a federal prosecutor for the last 17 years, was among those urging Bonner to head the Miller prosecution.

‘Wasn’t a Setback’

“The mistrial was a disappointment for Rob, but it wasn’t a setback,” MacIntyre added. “A hung jury is just something that comes up once in a while. He was anxious to try a case as head of the office. His only reservation was whether he could still carry out his administrative responsibilities, and he was able to do both.”

Bonner, who requested a gag order on comment by lawyers in the Miller case, defended his role in the Miller case in the interview last week.

“In general, I don’t see anything wrong with the U.S. attorney occasionally trying a case,” Bonner said. “You can’t appreciate the difficulties of the assistants in this office without going down into the courtroom yourself.

“Can it be done consistent with managerial and administrative duties?” he asked. “It does create some tensions between those two things. But if you are willing to work long and hard hours, you can try a case and run the office.”

When asked if he would have made the same decision if he had known that the initial Miller prosecution would take more than a year and result in a retrial, Bonner stopped short of a direct answer.

Slow Getting to Trial

“I knew going in it would not be a short trial,” he said. “It’s not really the length of the trial. What took longer than anticipated was the length of time (10 months) in getting to trial.”

The Miller case, Bonner noted, was only one of about 2,500 cases prosecuted by his office in the last two years, including an estimated 1,350 cases in 1985. In his first two years in office, Bonner said, the total number of federal prosecutions in the Los Angeles region has increased almost 30%. The overall conviction rate, he added, has increased from 95.7% in 1981 to 98.2% last year.

“I think the proper role of the U.S. attorney is to lead the office into a kind of atmosphere where we are reaching out to develop significant prosecutions,” Bonner said. “For me, the primary measure of a U.S. attorney’s office are the major indictments where assistants are involved in the early stages and grand jury investigations are utilized.

“Most of the significant cases brought by this office fall into that category,” he continued. “The defense kickback cases and the major fraud and corruption cases as well as a lot of major narcotics cases--Mobley would be the quintessential example--wouldn’t get prosecuted without the role of this office.

Collect $35 Million

In addition to the criminal cases prosecuted by his office, Bonner pointed to an increase in the production of the 30 attorneys assigned to civil cases involving the government. In 1985, he estimated, they collected $35 million in settlements on behalf of the government, an increase of almost $12 million over the previous year and a figure twice the cost of running the entire U.S. attorney’s office.

After almost two years in office, Bonner, 43, is still viewed by some of the 112 assistant prosecutors in his office as a formal and somewhat remote figure in contrast to his immediate predecessor, Stephen S. Trott, now an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division.

One of the most outgoing and popular chief federal prosecutors here in years, Trott was known not only as a top prosecutor but also as a talented amateur magician who occasionally performed magic tricks for his staff.

“I’m very partial to Steve Trott. He has a personal charisma. I cannot imagine anybody I know who could ever be a U.S. attorney who could do the job he did,” said one prosecutor who worked for both Trott and Bonner.

‘Highly Regarded’

“Rob is a good U.S. attorney, too,” he added. “His strength is that he is highly regarded as a trial lawyer, both on the private side and as a prosecutor. It’s good to have that in the front office.”

While other assistant prosecutors say that they have found Bonner to be very concerned with their individual problems and far less aloof than originally perceived, Bonner said there may be “some element of truth” to feelings that he has run the U.S. attorney’s office on a more formal basis than in the past.

“I’m sure at Kadison (Bonner’s old law firm) I was viewed as a bit remote and aloof,” he said. “I haven’t done anything in particular to change perceptions of my image. I am in charge of this office. As far as being one of the guys, that’s just not my image.

“I am required to put some demands on the assistants that require a little more distance than being just another attorney in the office,” Bonner added.

A lifelong Republican who grew up as a lawyer’s son in Wichita, Kan., Bonner earned his law degree in 1966 at Georgetown University in Washington, then moved to Los Angeles to spend a year as law clerk for Senior U.S. District Judge Albert Lee Stephens Jr.

Nominated by Reagan

After three years in the Navy’s judge advocate general’s corps, Bonner returned to Los Angeles as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1971 to 1975. He then moved into private practice until his nomination by President Reagan to be U.S. attorney in January, 1984.

Outside the courtroom, Bonner is soft-spoken and almost solemn on most occasions. In court, another side of his personality emerges. A tough and strong-willed prosecutor with a booming baritone voice, he frequently objected angrily to defense tactics in the Miller trial, occasionally drawing a rebuke for protesting “preposterous” legal maneuvers of the defense.

Bonner, who now lives in Pasadena with his wife and 15-year-old daughter, occasionally flashes a quiet sense of humor when the conversation focuses on his private life and personal style.

The six-foot Bonner spends six days a week at the office and has little time for recreation, but plays some tennis to keep his weight at 175 pounds. In an oblique reference to the chronic problems of the overweight Richard W. Miller, Bonner noted:

“I am within the Bureau (of Investigation) weight standards for a person of my height.”

Tries to Stop Smoking

A chain-smoker who is usually quick to light up a cigarette in the corridors of the U.S. Courthouse whenever there is a break in court proceedings, Bonner has tried repeatedly to stop smoking. He switched from Winstons to Winston Lights and then to Winston Ultra Lights.

When asked how many packs a day he smokes, Bonner jokingly replied:

“I don’t know--10 or 12.”

Actually, he quickly added, he tries to limit his smoking to about a pack a day. He also tries to make an occasional lunch date, but usually ends up skipping lunch altogether, surviving on his cigarettes, a constant flow of coffee and a daily afternoon outing to a frozen yogurt shop in the downtown Civic Center.

“I like raspberry yogurt shakes,” Bonner said. “I’ll slip away about 3 p.m. and go over to the mall for a Pink Cloud or something.”

Initiates Controversy

Bonner’s first brush with controversy came just three months after taking office, when he called for absorption of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force into the U.S. attorney’s office, criticizing the experience level of the strike force lawyers.

A few months later, Bonner again angered some Justice Department officials by declaring that efforts to prosecute environmental polluters in the Los Angeles area were hampered by the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency had no investigators based in the region.

Today, mindful of the reprimand he received after his DeLorean comments, Bonner limits his remarks on the continuing absence of any locally based EPA investigators to the observation that the situation is “not ideal.” He refuses to say anything about what happened to his strike force proposal, which was never formally made after Trott told him it would not be acceptable.

“My only comment on that is that I have very cordial relations with the new head of the strike force,” Bonner said. “I have no comment whatsoever on matters between me and the Justice Department.”

Hits Press Coverage

Bonner’s early problems over public comments have led him to a continuing evaluation of the best way to approach the press. At times he has criticized press coverage of his office, and he has been increasingly cautious in his remarks on a variety of subjects.

“Rob has very few political inhibitions, but he’s been burned for talking to the press,” a former top aide said. “A lot of Rob’s problems with Justice, I think, have come from a failure to keep his good judgment to himself. He’s talked pretty frankly and pretty openly and it’s got him in trouble. I feel it’s understandable that he feels that it didn’t get him anywhere.”

Bonner, who in the last year has installed a new media coordinator in his office and promulgated formal guidelines for his assistants to use in dealing with the press, conceded that he has felt himself torn between the desire for candor and the need for caution in speaking about his office.

“I’m probably a little more generous now with ‘no comments’ than when I first started off,” he said. “There are, of course, some perils and pitfalls in saying anything to the press. On the other hand, I think it’s appropriate to speak out about what we’re doing. There is a deterrent effect in prosecution itself.

“There will always be some who think I should not comment on something,” Bonner added. “I think I’ve learned from some of the things that have happened. I don’t intend to take the easy approach. I intend to take the tough approach.”

Overend reported from Los Angeles and Ostrow from Washington.